This is the time I love. When all is quiet except the sea. The only voices I hear are in the waves or maybe the stars singing those high treble notes or the full moon bringing her deep alto soothing voice to my starved ears.
The sea turtle hatchlings made their bold appearance and are now swimming towards grandmother moon through the silver moon glade.
This is peace. This is living. Alone, but not really. Nature spirits dance in wild abandon at the miraculous birth of ninety-three loggerheads and who knows…I might soon join them in their dancing.
In the dark of the night a faint glow emitted from the snow-white sand. From a celestial or mundane source? It was difficult to say from whence that light came. But that dim light allowed us to see the expanding dark spot in the center of the nest….Sea turtles arising from the depths of Mother Earth.
On the sea turtle patrol walk Sunday morning I listened and heard a 15 cascade and crawling with the stethoscope. A cascade or waterfall is a sound produced when sand fills in the space where an occupied egg was. When hatchlings break free of eggs, the rubbery shell collapses and sand fills it as babies crawl up.
How do they know to crawl up? It’s dark underground. Perhaps its the air flow…but that’s at least 12 inches above the eggs…maybe as deep as 24 inches. A mystery.
Team members who listened throughout the day heard sounds of hatching and crawling. When I arrived a little after 7 pm last night, my teammate Cathy said they were busy with the sounds we like to hear–cascades. Those cascades….those contractions of labor…indicate potential hatching.
At one point, I knelt down inside the tarp to listen with the scope and centered myself. As they worked beneath the sand, I envisioned a wave of love surrounding them, protecting them. I also sent a message with my thoughts….there’s a LOT of rain coming. If you’re ready to hatch this would be the perfect evening. It’s dark, the sand is fluffy and easy to crawl in and people are here to make sure you make it safely to the water….but it’s up to you sweet friends.
I listened again to the nest a little before 10pm and heard almost constant cascades after Cathy and I had heard shallow, loud cascades and deep, quieter cascades all evening. This indicated to me that the entire nest was working, not just a few turtles. When I heard non-stop, loud cascades I let other team members know our babies were about to make an appearance. A quick check with the red light showed a large V-shaped depression in the sand…another sign of eminent hatching.
Over the next two hours one dark spot…a nose, perhaps breathing the first breath of unobstructed, fresh air…became two, three…four….too many to count. Finally, in the very dim light we saw a slowly-growing darkness. The visitors, excited by the possible hatching, probably began to doubt us. We would relay the visuals…”there’s a dark blob…sea turtles are coming”…thirty minutes later….”the dark spot is getting bigger…think it’s gonna be a boil”…..thirty minutes later….”I know you don’t believe us but it looks like they are waiting to come together, it’s gonna be a boil”….thirty minutes later. And so on.
Kids got tired. Some folks gave up and went back to their beach homes. Who in their right mind would sit on a beach waiting for something that may not happen? Those of us that volunteer know what that slow-growing dark spot is and what will happen…at some point…maybe hours later….but we know….we know.
On one of my checks I knelt to the side of the light-shielding tarp and listened with only my senses. Ever so softly I heard their chirping. I had heard this through the stethoscope before but never when they were on the surface. The chirping is their way of communicating with each other while in their eggs. As the gathering of hatchlings reached over a foot in diameter and their bodies could be seen layered on top of each other, they chirped softly to each other. What were they saying? Was it encouragement? A gathering of siblings. So sweet was that faint sound….so precious. Tears form as I write this hours later, reflecting on the miracle of sea turtles…of all life.
On my last check at the nest before they were born, I knelt once again outside the tarp and could hear the boiling sound of sea turtle hatchlings crawling over each other and erupting in one massive contraction to the star-lit air. Bioluminescence illuminated the waves as they rolled onto shore welcoming the babies. Stars peeked through the clouds. A soft wind wrapped around all those human souls who stayed to witness the birth of 105 sea turtle souls into the sea.
Could this mama imagine the babies that would emerge? Photograph of a sea turtle release after rehab. Photo taken with permission by USFW under conditions that do not harm sea turtles.
I minded the nest as Cathy, Nancy, Rick, Matt and Jim observed the beautiful transformation of little earthlings to sea beings that, with good fortune, will return in 20 years or so lay their own nests.
After the parade of active babies made their way to the Gulf, I listened once again to a cascade and scratching. Another baby was working to make its way up and out into the night, into a future made brighter by the work Share the Beach volunteers do to give our sea turtle friends a chance at survival.
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Female sea turtle crawl
Share the Beach was started because hatchlings were consistently crawling toward porch lights and street lights rather than the sea. We walk the beaches of Alabama May 1st to September 1st looking for female sea turtle tracks. The tracks lead us to nests which we mark and get a GPS coordinates and other data. Around 50 days later (it varies dependent on heat/moisture) hatchlings begin to hatch under the sand. We then erect black tarps to help with disorientation from artificial light sources. It takes three or four days for babies to crawl through sand and empty egg shells to the surface. We monitor nests with stethoscopes and look for visual changes in the surface often. At night, the usual time for loggerheads to hatch, we attend the nests for as long as they are active. Sometimes visitors to our beaches get to observe the amazing sea turtle boils. If you are staying at the beach please be mindful of a few things: Please turn off all porch lights and keep indoor lightning low; don’t use bright flashlights around nests that are tarped and never when hatchlings are present or about to hatch…this is disorienting to the turtles and draws predators to the hatching area; remain respectful of the hard work turtles are doing to be born and keep horseplay to a minimum and noise levels low.
Special note from last night’s hatching….thank you Cathy, Nancy, Rick, Jim and Matt for such awesome teamwork! And to our visitors who helped us hold a space of respect and love for the hatchlings….THANK YOU! And….to those precious babies who lit up our night and our hearts….thank you for reminding us of the sacred cycles of life, the wisdom of our instincts and the ability to care and love beyond ourselves.
The Big Dipper hangs at the northern horizon as I push up from the white sand. The stethoscope is still in my ears after it transmitted progress of the baby sea turtles hatching, scratching and making their way up…up…up from the darkness to the starlight.
With no moon to dim them, the stars are spectacular and are like jewels in the velvet sky. They seem to twinkle into infinity as the Milky Way winds its way through Scorpio and other constellations hanging gracefully over the Gulf of Mexico.
It is a perfect night on the beach. Music of the waves gently lapping against the shore is the background as the babies work diligently underground, in that dark Unknown. With instinct beyond human understanding, they tear and rip the rubbery egg shells and begin to crawl up…up…up to an unknown Source of Life.
Even when a nest hatched early and unattended and most babies crawled toward porch lights or were dispatched by crabs and coyotes and we hunted with visitors and ran and followed tracks with great sadness….there is still a sense of quiet peace. Nature isn’t always cuddly.
I now sit and listen with the stethoscope to the newly born working at the neatly tarped and trenched nest, ready for their imminent arrival, protected from lights that would surely draw them astray. Waves roll onto the shore. A shooting star flashes overhead. The warm breeze caresses my face. I am alone but only isolated from other humans. Everything here pushes in and tells me it’s okay.
The blood of dead hatchlings, killed by ghost crabs, is still on my hands…is on the hands of all humans as we alter and change wild habitat to claim it for ourselves.
It washed up during the sea turtle patrol walk not far from where I turned around. Usually I walk back on the road but the sand was firm so walking wasn’t difficult and it was a glorious sunrise with wild cloud formations over the Gulf and beach,
The bottle with the note in it was sitting at the edge of the surf. In the five seasons I’ve volunteered with our sea turtle team, I’ve found three messages in a bottle. Oddly enough, all during mid-July.
The first was after a wedding or commitment ceremony. It contained a prayer, images of the couple’s dreams and their vows. Their message, cast out into the Great Unknown, brought me a message of love and hope. I sent their hopes onward, out into the Universe, and kept the bottle in my office next to a dream board my daughter and son-in-law made.
The second bottle contained a very moving note about a young man that died in a distillery explosion in Kentucky. His mother’s friend sent her message out into the Great Mystery and asked the finder to let Kyle’s mom know it was found. I wrote a blog about it, let the damp note dry and sent it all to Rhonda, Kyle’s mom. I hope her grief was eased by knowing Kyle’s story lived on, his life touched others he had never met.
This last bottle had blue liquid in the bottom. Somebody forgot to use waterproof ink. They didn’t seal the cork. They also used a form letter…imagine sending a form letter out into the Universe. A fill-in-the-blank message in a bottle….with water-based ink. The paper was saturated and was falling apart when it was removed from the bottle.
I wondered….how often do people use a fill-in-the-blank wish list for their lives? Are we willing to live life by default or can we have the courage to work for our dreams? Are we sloppy in our life dreams? Are they easily erased by the challenges that come our way? Can we have the audacity to use permanent ink and create imaginative requests of our lives and be so full of belief that Something Out There will find it and respond that we seal the cork well so when it’s opened, the message is received with clarity.
It was a fun thing for the kids to do…fill out the form letter, toss it in the water and imagine. No big deal. But it reminded me to live with intention and realize that everything I do affects not only my life but the lives of others around me. Whoever opens up a blog post and reads it or sees one of my images of dolphins or whales or ocean life…they are, in some way, affected. When I smile at the grocery clerk or hold the door for a stranger….or snuggle with my 11 month old puppy…or rub my kitty friend’s ears…every action matters.
It’s easy to live in a vacuum and forget that we do make a difference. Every little thing we do….it matters.
What would your message in a bottle say? Would you use permanent ink? How would you prepare to send it out into the Great Mystery?
As I hopped into the car, silver strands of spider webs swirled around me. After an 18 mile bike ride I was headed to help the sea turtle team with our three nests this morning. THREE!
Was on the bike just after 5.30am and enjoying the beautiful sunrise and cool temperature when my phone rang at 6.01am. It was a turtle team friend. She knows to call me before the ALL CALL goes out because I live 20 miles from our Laguna Key team beach. Rather than fumble with it I just let it go to voice mail and continued the ride.
When you are in the back of the state park on a backcountry trail, it’s going to take a while to get back to the car anyway. Why not finish my ride?
The Share the Beach ALL-CALL came in at 6.22am. I had already turned around to head back to the car so I’d check it when I finished riding. But at 6.31am my friend Cathy, who had called me earlier, texted me so I knew something was up. It wasn’t just one nest. Her text read: THREEEE NESTS!
So I forwarded my iPod to Prince and Michael Franti and put the after-burner on full blast. So much for a leisurely pedal back to finish the third day in a row of cycling fun. I texted Cathy: Cycling. Be there in a bit. There is an art to texting and cycling which I don’t recommend.
Back to the car by 7.10am and called to find out their location. Just starting the first nest at the far end of our section. Nice, I thought. By the time I drive from the state park to the beach they will have found eggs at the first nest and I’ll help with the other two.
Unfortunately that wasn’t the case and in fact our team was split into two groups, each digging to find eggs on two nests within 100 yards of each other. I knew it was bad when I arrived and all I saw was the top of their heads sticking out from the hole. No eggs yet.
I joined in and it took us until 8.30 am to find eggs. The nest was right on the edge of the water and had to be moved by 9am. The other diggers still had no luck with their nest.
You might wonder how we know for sure there are eggs and it’s not just a false crawl. A false crawl is when we have tracks that generally are in and out of the water with no body pit or spray. An indicator of a nest is of course the crawl, an indentation or body pit and sand spray. Both nests had body pits and spray. The other nest was even closer to the water. A high tide would most likely take it out.
Deb found the eggs and ran to help the other group while Jan, one of our team leaders, and I started removing and counting eggs. Meanwhile Ken, the other team leader, went due north of us to dig a hole that would have the same depth and dimensions as the original nest dug by mama turtle.
We finished moving the eggs, putting the predator screen and stakes in place and marking it and headed for the third nest further east. We left the rest of our team trying their best to find eggs before 9am.
Nest three of the day was wonderfully placed by the mother turtle so we only had to find the eggs, not move them. And do all the measurements and GPS readings that we do.
I began digging…by digging I mean carefully using the side of my hand to gently scrap layers of sand somewhere in the spray zone of the nest. Ken and Jan started the measurements of crawl, placement and such. I hadn’t been digging long when the rest of our team showed up and helped. It was getting hot and none of us had eaten breakfast so we were quite anxious to find the eggs, take the GPS reading, erect the protective gadgetry and head home.
This is where the mother turned. Notice her body pit. Spray is to the left.
Every mother turtle has her own, unique way of placing her nests so there isn’t a formula that takes into consideration her crawl in and out of the water, the spray zone or placement of the body pit. Every one is different so that makes finding the eggs a chore.
Another view of the crawl, body pit and spray. Spray is to the left.
Thankfully, I found them within 15 minutes of scooping sand. All of our knees were nearly blistered from kneeling and scooping sand for hours. Also, our team isn’t made up of young adults. We are all middle aged plus so it really takes a team effort to do the work.
This past Sunday we had two nests, yesterday we had two nests and today three. I predict a really bad hurricane along our coast some time late August or early September. These turtles have a way of knowing when to lay their nests. I hope this isn’t the case but we’ve seen it before. Or they know the satellite tag team is about to began their work and they are wanting to avoid the capture and tagging process.
We were exhausted after our morning’s work.
About 55 days from now, we will be recruiting volunteers to help us with these nests. We erect black tarps behind and along the side to keep light from the houses and street out, but we really need to be present to make sure they don’t get out and crawl under houses or into the street. Surprise hatchings have yielded this result and it’s sad to see the carnage of baby turtles if they crawl the wrong way out of their nest. Third week of July if you’d like to become a volunteer we can get a free shirt and training for you. The nights sitting out under stars while the Gulf of Mexico laps gently along the shore….it’s just hard to beat. Seeing the tiny turtles in the black out conditions make their way to the water is amazing. Once in a while there is phosphorescence in the sand and their small flippers create little star-bursts of light as they touch the sand. Have I sold you on volunteering yet?
We will have seven nests hatching around the same time. That’s crazy….and there could be more.
You never know what the day will bring. Today it was sea turtle mania. Tomorrow…who knows!
This is the time I love. When all is quiet except the sea. The only voices I hear are in the waves or maybe the stars singing those high treble notes or the full moon bringing her deep alto soothing voice to my starved ears.
The sea turtle hatchlings made their bold appearance and are now swimming towards grandmother moon through the silver moon glade.
This is peace. This is living. Alone, but not really. Nature spirits dance in wild abandon at the miraculous birth of ninety-three loggerheads and who knows…I might soon join them in their dancing.
